Google has announced the intention to remove support for H.264 video playback from its Crome browser to "enable open innovation," yet still apparently plans to promote Adobe Flash.

According to Google's product manager of Chrome Mike Jazayeri, the company will be "focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles," at least when it comes to WebM VP8 and Theora video codecs Google released after acquiring On2 last year.

That effort excludes support for the ISO's MPEG 4 H.264 codec, which is commercially licensed by its pool of patent holders. Google is apparently not exercising the same principles when it comes to supporting Adobe Flash, which unlike H.264, is completely proprietary to one company rather than being administered by a standards body.

Last August, the MPEG Licensing Authority announced that it would indefinitely extend royalty-free Internet broadcasting licensing of its H.264 video codec to end users, erasing a key advantage of Google's WebM rival and cementing Apple's preferred H.264 as the video format for modern HTML5 video on the web.

Google's blog indicates its announcement is intended to "give content publishers and developers using [HTML5 video tags] an opportunity to make any necessary changes to their sites," an apparent effort to force developers to support the WebM codec that has been largely ignored over the past year as content publishers have increasingly standardized upon H.264.

Patent issues, mobile problems

The attraction of WebM is that it does not require licensing fees for use. However, critics claim that while the VP8 technology that WebM uses is not up to par with H.264, it very likely infringes patents held by the same vendors that have pooled their patents to create H.264. That means WebM will be hit with licensing demands if it ever does take off, erasing its sole benefit.

Something similar happened to Microsoft's Windows Media Codec. Once it was openly published by the SMTPE under the name VC-1, it was found to be largely derived from MPEG standards, a revelation that limited Microsoft from substantially profiting from VC-1 royalties.

Additionally, WebM is not supported by the hardware chipsets in mobile devices like smartphones and the iPad, which include H.264 hardware to speed video playback. This would force mobile devices to render WebM via software, which would offer poor performance less efficiently, causing a significant hit on battery life.

Industry views on WebM

Apple has rejected WebM as a standard that should replace H.264, in large part because it does nothing of benefit for Apple (to whom licensing fees are not an issue) while offering poorer performance and being incompatible with the company's installed base of tens of millions of iPods and iOS devices.

Google has no users of existing devices to support, and can simply direct its existing Android users to buy new phones if WebM-capable hardware acceleration chips ever become available. The company does benefit from using free software however, as it allows it to distribute Android, its Chrome browser, and the forthcoming Chrome OS for free, without any licensing costs.

That might change if Oracle's suit against Android over its unlicensed use of Java is upheld, and if MPEG partners demand licensing fees for patent infringements within WebM, leaving Google's enthusiasm for its free software less likely to be shared by other commercial entities, including content publishers and hardware makers.

Firestorm of user backlash

Immediately after posting its intent to remove bundled support for H.264 from Chrome, overwhelmingly negative responses were left by Google's Chromium blog readers.

"Wow, this is the worst thing to happen to web standards I've seen in a long time. This just reinforces the notion that Google doesn't care about users," wrote Eridius.

"Considering that the licensing restrictions surrounding use of H.264 were lifted by their license holder to allow ease of adoption on the web and that H.264 is the most popular Video Codec for HD since it is used on Blue-ray Discs and on all Apple Products, I would think this was a dumb idea. I understand being "open" but people slammed Mozilla for taking this stance with Firefox and it's support of H.264 so this just looks like a lame duck attempt by Google to promote their own Video Codec. Thanks for making the HTML5 Transition even more messy," wrote Kevin.

"This is a move by Google where they care more about the open source "community" than they do actual users of their browser. Let's be real here: WebM has a LONG way to go before it will have any serious amount of traction, and Theora is a joke. Like it or now, h264 IS becoming the standard, and dropping support for it for no good reason is ridiculous.

"Currently, in eyeshot, I have six devices that can all play digital video: a PS3, an Xbox 360, a laptop, an iMac, a PSP, and an iPhone. Guess what one codec each and every one of those devices is able to play? h264. If I want the widest audience possible to be able to access my content, why in the world would I encode it in either WebM or Theora? I wouldn't," wrote Shidoshi.

"Are you going to not be bundling Flash now in your support of open standards? How two-faced," wrote Greg Brown.

"How obnoxious! There's no large scale enterprise encoding tools for WebM. Some of us have rather a lot of video to encode. Thanks for breaking the browser I use, google. I'll be moving right back to safari as soon as this happens," wrote Nicoles.

"As someone who has to manage (currently) about 150 GB worth of different videos across a plethora of websites, I wholeheartedly do NOT thank you for doing this. All you're doing is making me consider moving back to using Safari as my primary browser. I was just starting to like HTML5's video element, too... The problem is, WebM and Ogg are both extremely unsupported in everything except for FireFox, and now Chrome. Professional video software (Final Cut, Premiere, Avid, et all) doesn't support it (or support is flaky at best), and most video tools these days haven't a clue as to what a webm or oggv file is. This is a bad move, and will set the adoption of HTML5 video back even further. Definitely for me, and definitely for anyone besides YouTube, " wrote Jeff Geerling.

"This is an utterly stupid move driven purely by corporate competition and not consumer convenience. Pushing WebM - an inferior and unsupported format - is all about an attempt to wrest control of the consumer video market from h.264 (and in many ways, Apple). h.264 is in use nearly everywhere - including your very own YouTube, Google.If anything, it's going to make publishers even more hostile toward Google and it's perceived control over their businesses," wrote John Federico.

Unintended consequences

By removing support for H.264 from Chrome without any professional tools for WebM encoding in place, Google will likely only force its Chrome users to obtain and install H.264 playback codecs themselves, as Firefox users must already do. They may also switch to other browsers that can play H.264 video.

Mozilla has already taken the position of refusing to license H.264 playback in Firefox. Over the last two years, Firefox market share growth has plateaued and remained flat since the fall of 2009, just as Google's Chrome began to grow rapidly (as indicated in StatCounter's Global Stats, below). Google's growth has come largely at the expense of Internet Explorer and growth of Firefox, with Safari slowly growing over the last two years.

Mozilla's 30 percent of web users currently lack built-in support for H.264 playback, while more than 65 percent of the web uses Internet Explorer, Chrome or Safari, which do. With Google following Mozilla in ending support for H.264, users will either switch browsers or be unable to play the majority of videos that are not being served via Adobe Flash.

Nearly all mobile smartphone browsers support H.264. If Google also removes H.264 support from Chrome within Android and the forthcoming Chrome OS, it may be enough to kill standards-based web video and send content producers back to Flash as a video distribution system.

Ironically, Flash itself now uses H.264 as its internal codec within the Flash wrapper, meaning Google's push to quash H.264 can only possibly shift the world to using H.264, albeit wrapped in a Flash container that is not compatible with Apple's iOS devices.

More likely however, it means users will simply adopt browsers that support common standards and that growth of Chrome will peak alongside the now stagnant share of Firefox.

That's a shame, I've rather enjoyed using Chrome, but will head back to Safari now.

I can't understand why one part of Google is trying to pull the plug on .264, whilst another in the form of YouTube is fully supporting it.

Anyway, as far as I can see the battle is already won in favor of .264. As soon as the porn industry picked it's format, it's pretty much over. A sad state of affairs, but they seem to have undue influence on these things.

Apple should make google's video format work on it's browser in exchange for google enabling h.264. I don't even think this is hurting Apple. I think it hurts the developers of the h.264 video platform. I guess Apple could disable google search and instead load up Bing.

So Google is now both evil and stupid. I can see where they are coming from regarding the patents issue and open software but it is so widely used everywhere in hardware decoders and the Sandy Bridge AVC encoders that it's irresponsible to cut support in a browser with over 10% marketshare in order to have it their own way.

I wonder which browser will absorb that 10% again. I suspect Firefox but it's a shame to see Safari so far behind. I think it's due to the quality of the Windows version of Safari. It was not a pleasant experience when I used it.

Google thinks they can win the Android vs iPhone war using a video codec as a chess piece. Hard to say what the relationship is with YouTube and Apple. Maybe their contract to support h.264 is expiring soon.

This decision obviously favors google, but I didn't see DED mention this: Web content is royalty free, but not the encoders or decoders.

Nice of Google to release webm, and if anyone wants to sue, just get it over with. No one is suing over Vorbis and a big company, Sandisk uses it, and it isn't as if they can't extract money over a lawsuit.

Of course if Google wants to, YouTube can go web m overnight, as it already is converting to it now on their html5 access view. It can't kill apple to support it, since it is free, and it is hardware supported.

So Google is now both evil and stupid. I can see where they are coming from regarding the patents issue and open software but it is so widely used everywhere in hardware decoders and the Sandy Bridge AVC encoders that it's irresponsible to cut support in a browser with over 10% marketshare in order to have it their own way.

I wonder which browser will absorb that 10% again. I suspect Firefox but it's a shame to see Safari so far behind. I think it's due to the quality of the Windows version of Safari. It was not a pleasant experience when I used it.

I didn't use Chrome just to use html5 videos, but if it no longer can, I'll switch back to Safari 100%. Personally I prefer the layout of Chrome over Safari, but I don't prefer it enough to have to jump back and forth when I come across a video I can't watch.

Additionally, WebM is not supported by the hardware chipsets in mobile devices like smartphones and the iPad, which include H.264 hardware to speed video playback. This would force mobile devices to render WebM via software, which would perform more poorly and less efficiently, causing a significant hit on battery life.

Looks like to me a move to push Handroid along with a POS codec - what a way to differentiate yourselves. Use FLASH (worst performing crap available on mobile devices) and bundle with the inferior WebM.

How but they just leave all the graphics positions blank and ship there phones with a set of 4 crayons.

Didn't care for the Handroid OS before - sure don't care now. Great move by the "were not evil"empire. LMAO!

You can't help but think this move is SOLEY done to hurt Apple's push for HTML5 standards for mobile. What a bunch of whiny babies! They must be freaking out the iPhone is now on Verizon, and it will cut into Android sales. Google - users want a good experience. If you make it harder on them to do things, they will leave. Simple.

If competition is like the 100m sprint, this is like a contender trying to trip another contender and everyone ends up doing 100m in 5 minutes instead of 10 seconds.

Google has not been very successful at producing new services (most initiatives failed, I read a list a few months back). Google Search and Android (which does not make them money directly and which they bought) are exceptions. Now, failing at innovation, they turn to trying to trip the competition.

What kind of people are running Google? It feels like a company that has lost its soul and is being run by bean counters instead of innovators (like Apple in the 90's)..

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

This is a GOOD MOVE! Partially.

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

ff has already said they will not support h.264 for HTML5.

So from a web developer perceptive, if you are going to need to support two formats anyway, it seems logical that it should be Flash and h.264. If you want to support FF as a an open source gesture, then make the extra effort and export as Ogg too. I fail to see why I would want to support webM/V8. If Chrome retains Flash support, webM will never take off.

Seriously? It is one thing to not support Flash for technical reasons. It is an entirely different thing to remove support for H.264 to force people to use your video codec. If this is how Google is going to "compete" then they are officially evil. Good thing I don't need Chrome. Going in the trash can right now.

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

This is a GOOD MOVE! Partially.

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

ff has already said they will not support h.264 for HTML5.

And what happens when WebM is found to be infringing patents? And sorry, IP rights will not suddenly vanish. You sound like someone who has never created anything of value.

Speaking of browsers Anyone notice that Safari is a terrible memory hog?

It seems to be bad at releasing memory properly - which Firefox & Camino do fine. But Safari just grows and grows. As I am a pretty aggressive user - opening windows and multiple tabs frequently - it really has a negative affect. I just see the stats build up, and if I close a window very little is returned to free. I have to quit every day or two or the system comes to its knees.

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

This is a GOOD MOVE! Partially.

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

This is a GOOD MOVE! Partially.

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

ff has already said they will not support h.264 for HTML5.

Time to switch brands of tinfoil for your hat. Your current brand is obviously not up to snuff.

I am the webmaster for 2 sites, and after all the time I spent getting audio, and video on the website, I am disappointed in Googles decision and I am not changing a damn thing! Google can suck it! They are being hardheaded, stupid, and ignorant, and I'll just drop support for Chrome from my websites!

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

This is a GOOD MOVE! Partially.

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

So this is PARTIALLY a good thing... supporting flash is another debate... for another time.

ff has already said they will not support h.264 for HTML5.

People have to be able to make money off their software. Google just wants to force people into using their crappy webM so they can track what I'm watching on the internet so they can make a buck and not other softare developers and it's no one's business but my own and who I'm paying for the content. I think anti trust should look into this matter. It's an anti competitive move on Google's part.

Patents, trademarks, copyrights, IP, it ALL has to go... GO AWAY FOR GOOD!

As nice as this would be, there are certain things which are too complicated for the open source userbase, and thus far, video codecs is one of them. I'm not going to rehash too much about WebM because the information is available for anyone who wants to research it on the internet, but it is a good example of this problem. And it is anything but unencumbered... if it becomes the standard, or looks like it will become the standard, we're probably going to see that put to the test...

And it just isn't up to snuff...

Quote:

Originally Posted by rec9140

drop the HIGHLY ENCUMBERED h.264 standard. The only reason the MPEGLA gestapo is doing what they are is to get you hooked in like an addict.. then.... WHAMN! LICENSING FEES! ! ! Any one who doesn't see this coming is just not paying attention.

Drop h.264 when there is a suitable replacement...
Right now we could use some degree of consistency or reliability on the internet...

Quote:

Originally Posted by rec9140

ff has already said they will not support h.264 for HTML5.

More open source politics.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone that can do him absolutely no good. Samuel Johnson

People have to be able to make money off their software. Google just wants to force people into using their crappy webM so they can track what I'm watching on the internet so they can make a buck and not other softare developers and it's no one's business but my own and who I'm paying for the content. I think anti trust should look into this matter. It's an anti competitive move on Google's part.

It is not really anti-competitive as long as they make their own content (e.g., YouTube) also available in H.264 and Flash. I doubt they will do this as it would probably instigate investigations into their business practices.

People have to be able to make money off their software. Google just wants to force people into using their crappy webM so they can track what I'm watching on the internet so they can make a buck and not other softare developers and it's no one's business but my own and who I'm paying for the content. I think anti trust should look into this matter. It's an anti competitive move on Google's part.

I agree with you on this. Personally I couldn't give a monkeys about the whole open source debate. All I want is something that works and works reliably, and if someone makes a few dollars at it, that's fine by me.

On thing that Flash really had going for it is that it became a de facto standard. Sure it might have some problems with it, but at least you knew where you were with it.

Now we have to have open source (apparently) and it's becoming a fragmented mess. The open source community fail to recognize that it's only really the technical community that is bothered about this. The vast majority of consumers want something that just works and works well.

People have to be able to make money off their software. Google just wants to force people into using their crappy webM so they can track what I'm watching on the internet so they can make a buck and not other softare developers and it's no one's business but my own and who I'm paying for the content. I think anti trust should look into this matter. It's an anti competitive move on Google's part.

How can it be anti-competitive when Google gives the codec away for free? That makes as much sense as apple being anti-competitive for snubbing flash.